The Process And Challenges Of Strategy Formulation At Simba Corporation Limited, Kenya

Abstract

Many operating business environments in this modern world are delineated by rapid dynamisms both from internal and external fronts. Businesses must, thence, come up with dynamic and appropriate strategies to respond accordingly so as to ensure they stay afloat.Strategy formulation forms a very critical component of the strategic management process. To that regard, therefore, it involves systematically arranging one's ideas and thoughts with a lot of precision and putting into documentation the logically developed and thought about strategies. Ideally, it is the fundamental stage of strategic management process in which firms use various resources to accomplish objectives of the strategy and goals of the company as a whole. It is worth noting that the ability to come up with, develop, and effectively document strategies successfully is imperative to any organisation. Despite the importance of the formulation process in strategic management, it is often overshadowed or overlooked by the implementation or monitory and evaluation stages. In view of this, this research study, set out to address two main objectives which were to establish strategy formulation process adopted by Simba Corporation and to determine the challenges experienced by the Company in strategy formulation process.The study adopted case study where senior staff were interviewed and their responses analyzed through content analysis method. An analysis of various literatures on strategy formulation did reveal that there is limited knowledge on how strategies should ideally be formulated. This can, hence, be deduced that there is no standard formula or procedure for doing the same. At the same time, various scholars indeed presented varying reasons as challenges to strategy formulation. The study further identified several challenges to strategy formulation including resistance to change, deep rooted culture, conflict of interest, ideological differences, market and customers' expectation, government and legislation, market liberalization, globalization, ethics, communication, and inadequacy of resources among others. The study also found that the Company had adopted diversification as its main strategyin its quest to being one of the major players in the Motor Industry in Kenya. Other sources of data including but not limited to research articles and other secondary company data sources were also very instrumental in this study for purposes of data collection. The findings of this research work indeed contribute to theory and knowledge by clearly underlining strategy formulation process and challenges experienced therein. In addition, this study can be of great interest to managers in the automobile sector as it underlines the need for management to deeply understand their operating environment in order to formulate sound and appropriate strategies that will not only ensure their survival but also growth and profitability within the motor industry thereby positioning them strategically. The study concluded that for organization to survive in the dynamic business environment, it must identify challenges posing hurdles to strategy formulation and come up with strategies that match the prevailing environmental conditions.